Enterprises use a variety of information technology applications to achieve business objectives such as increased productivity, reduced cycle time, increased visibility into process flows, improved tracking of inventory, and other objectives. Different applications or software programs may be developed to address these business objectives separately. Ticket management systems may promote documenting and tracking business activities and manage the flow among different states in business processes.
For example, a ticket may be entered to document an identified software problem. The ticket may be assigned to a sequence of persons responsible for satisfying the need. A first person may be an analyst who determines a plan for satisfying the need and updates the ticket with the result of the analysis. A second person may be a budget planner who analyzes the cost of taking the identified corrective action and updates the ticket with the result of the budget planning. A third person may be a department manager who schedules and allocates resources based on a budget to perform the task identified in the ticket and updates the ticket with the result of management planning. A fourth person may be an expeditor who orders capital equipment to satisfy the need and updates the ticket with the receipts of the purchase order. A fifth person may be a shipping dock receiver who receives the ordered capital equipment and updates the ticket to indicate the receipt of the equipment. A sixth person may be an information technologist who installs and brings on line a new server computer and updates the ticket accordingly. This is a simple example of how a ticket may flow through different states in an enterprise work flow.
An asset management system may be used to track the location and state of assets. For example, hours in operation, location, maintenance history, and other information about the subject asset may be recorded and tracked using the asset management system.